The CONCIERGES
Marie-Anne Mancio
SARAH DUNANT
Photo credit: Charlie Hopkinson
Dr. Marie-Anne Mancio (Founder and Lecturer, Hotel Alphabet) trained as an artist before gaining a D.Phil (University of Sussex) for her thesis Maps for Wayward Performers: feminist readings of contemporary live art practice in Britain.
An accredited Arts Society lecturer, she was commissioned to write and present online courses for Tate and How To Read Paintings for Pearson Love to Learn. She has written numerous art reviews and essays and was commissioned to create a series of e-books on The Theatre of Mistakes.
She also lectures on art history tours abroad for ACE cultural tours. Her lecture on The Bed in Art was filmed for HENI talks.
Since attaining an MPhil (Distinction) in Creative Writing (Glasgow University), her art practice is primarily text based including performances, prints, a novella about four migrant women in antebellum America - Whorticulture - and a novel about Pauline Boty. Her fiction is represented by Sabhbh Curran @ Curtis Brown. Her research interests include women artists, sexuality, sex worker rights. She was invited to appear on Oriana Fox's 'The O Show.'
She is a founder member and co-Director of feminist art collective InFems
She loves hotels and alphabets.
Sarah (Guest Lecturer, Hotel Alphabet) studied history at Newnham College, Cambridge from where she went on to become a writer, broadcaster, teacher and critic. She has written thirteen novels, four of which have been short listed for awards, and edited two books of essays. She worked for many years for the BBC in radio and television including presenting BBC 2 TV’s arts programme, The Late Show and Radio3’s Nightwaves.
Most recently she has presented a monthly history show for Radio 4 “When Greeks flew Kites” and is a regular contributor to “A Point of View”.
She is an accredited Arts Society lecturer, has taught renaissance studies at Washington University, St Louis, and creative writing at University of Oxford Brookes, where she was awarded an honorary doctorate for her
services to higher education and literature.
Her most recent novels, set within the Italian renaissance weave cutting edge historical scholarship into fast moving popular fiction, have become
international best sellers, translated into thirty languages.
In the Name of the Family 2018
Blood and Beauty 2013
Sacred Hearts, 2010
In the Company of the Courtesan 2007
The Birth of Venus 2004
She is currently writing a novel about Isabella d’Este.
Georgia Mancio
Georgia Mancio (Guest Lecturer, Hotel Alphabet) is a multi award-winning jazz vocalist, lyricist, and producer. Her copious industry acknowledgments include consecutive wins at the Parliamentary Jazz Awards: Best Vocalist (2021) and Best Album (2020) for Finding Home, and several nominations at the Jazz FM, British Jazz, and Urban Music awards.
Her partnership with Grammy-winning pianist/composer Alan Broadbent has yielded two albums: Quiet is the Star and Songbook, a book (The Songs of Alan Broadbent and Georgia Mancio) and performances across Europe and the US, including Ronnie Scott's and Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Other credits include: BBC Proms, Kate Williams, Liane Carroll, Ian Shaw, Pat Metheny (lyric approval), Bobby McFerrin, and her own festivals Revoice! and Hang. Georgia has also lectured at The Course on the music of the Jazz Age and is a vocal tutor at City University. She has been both an amateur film-maker and trapeze artist, and loves travelling and learning languages.
Paul McCormick (1967-2021)
Paul McCormick (Director of Operations, Hotel Alphabet) trained as an artist and created the conceptual art work Impossible Diamond for New York duo Praxis and James Franco's Museum of Non-Visible Art. His paintings of political prisoners and his ceramic installation dedicated to the deaths of 100 schoolgirls in Afghanistan were chosen for In Kritieke Staat, an exhibition curated by Marit Otto for Kunstenlab, Deventer (2013) and were inspired by his experiences in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Later works included a 40m x 40m painting in concrete and abstract paintings that translated smell into colour. He created the I Am Caravaggio! tour and never got lost.